An Unexpected Journey Home

Anticipation can be destructive. In the months leading up to the premiere of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I found myself daring to hope that Jackson would strike gold once more--that this film would be a triumph of story-telling and visual effects on the same level as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Day by day, the hope grew from a small kernel into an entire corn field...until the reviews starting rolling in. They were positive, for the most part, but not overwhelmingly so. Many "top film critics" complained that they didn't feel engaged in the story, that the pacing was too slow, that it  felt hackneyed and repetitive. Crestfallen, my hopes regressed. The anticipation gnawed at me still, but a new feeling took root: doubt. Was Peter Jackson's attempt to make The Hobbit, a straightforward, 300-page children's story, into an epic film trilogy nothing more than an intricate scheme to make himself even richer by capitalizing on J.R.R. Tolkien's life's work? Was Jackson selling out at the expense of quality? What if I hated The Hobbit?

These are the things that a die-hard, lifelong Tolkien fan worries about when someone--anyone, even the massively talented Jackson--attempts to adapt the stories of Middle Earth from the page to the big screen.

As it turns out, my fears were completely unfounded, and the "top film critics" are full of rubbish. The Hobbit is, from beginning to end, nothing short of perfection.

It wasn't the innovation or the novelty of The Hobbit that defined the quality of my viewing experience. It was its familiarity, the fact that it felt like an extension or an expansion of the LOTR trilogy. It was its similarity, yet differences; from the music to the costumes to the color palettes, it felt like meeting an old friend for the first time in a decade and learning about all the wonderful things she's seen and done since the last time you saw each other. This franchise is surely more than a money-maker for Jackson. He treats the Tolkien canon with reverence, and it shows in his films.

That's not to say that The Hobbit isn't, at times, rather silly and droll. After all, the main characters are the cheerful hobbit Bilbo Baggins and 13 hungry, boozy, loud, bombastic dwarves. Viewers may have grown accustomed to the stately elves and human warriors that were involved in the events of the LOTR films, and perhaps came to expect the same of the new trilogy. There is nothing inherently dignified or elegant about dwarves or hobbits; thus, their discourse and activities are proportionately outlandish. I found the dwarves' antics delightful and extremely true to the tone of Tolkien's work. Capturing the essence of a group of characters is difficult (one of the major failures of the Harry Potter movies, in my opinion), but Jackson succeeds, creating a charming pack of misfits that seem to have been lifted straight from the hundreds of thousands of pages that Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth. I respect Jackson's ability to adapt to the change in tone of The Hobbit films from the more sober LOTR. Those who criticized the silliness simply didn't understand that The Hobbit takes place when Middle Earth is not being directly threatened by the evil forces of Sauron, and that the relatively peaceful setting demands a different, more lighthearted tone.

In life, anticipation is often met with disappointment. Heinous tragedies occur of which no sense can be made. But I'm pleased to find that the refuge offered by the fantastical tales of Middle Earth, where good prevails over evil with comfortable predictability, is still here for us, in all its 48-frames-per-second visual splendor. The old adage says that you can never really go home, but for those of us devoted to Tolkien's Middle Earth, Jackson awards us with a unique opportunity to prove the adage--and those "critics"--delightfully wrong.

A Gender-Bender That Didn't Quite Bend

I tend to refrain from blogging about every movie that I watch, since I operate under the assumption that no one particularly cares what I think about movies (or anything, for that matter). However, I wanted to write about Albert Nobbs, a strange little period piece I recently saw on DVD, for the simple reason that I’d like to remember how it made me feel.

I won’t say unequivocally that I enjoyed this film; rather, it made a forceful impression. It stuck with me, so to speak. It had quite a few flaws, and it fell short in many ways. I suppose it frustrated me for all its unrealized potential and self-consciousness about wanting to avoid the tacky gender-bender stereotype, but it was also oddly touching in a way that I never expected.

Albert Nobbs is set in socially conservative 19^th century Ireland, when women were either sheltered to the extreme or left to fend for themselves as best as they could, depending on their socioeconomic status. The eponymous character, played by a shockingly convincing Glenn Close, is ostensibly a waiter in an upscale Dublin hotel catering to the badly behaved super-rich. As a waiter, Albert is efficient, punctual, meticulous, and discreet. As a man, he is reserved and taciturn, somewhat of an enigma to the other members of the hotel’s staff. When Albert is forced to share a room for one night with a migrant laborer named Mr. Page, we and his new roommate discover that Albert is actually a woman (surprise!). Luckily for Albert, crisis is averted by the revelation that the new confidant is also a woman disguised as a man, which leads to a shared bond of trust and much commiserating over the complications of living as the opposite gender. Upon learning that Mr. Page is married to a woman, Albert decides that, if Mr. Page can do it, Albert can also find a wife to assuage his loneliness. He designates a maid named Helen—who already has an alcoholic boyfriend named Joe--as the object of his affection, and proceeds to court her. This courting is to the severe detriment of Albert’s hard-earned savings, as Joe and Helen have devised a plain to exploit Albert’s solicitations in order to fund their journey to America. Meanwhile, Albert is busy striving to make his fantasy of operating his own tobacco shop, with Helen at his side, a reality. Things start to go awry when Joe gets Helen pregnant. Albert recognizes that Joe is a hit-it-and-quit-it sort of lad, and tries to warn Helen, but Helen overtly rejects Albert. Helen reports back to Joe, who drunkenly starts a fight, prompting Albert to intervene in Helen’s defense. Albert gets his head knocked against a wall for his trouble. At some point during the kerfuffle, Albert quietly returns to his bedroom and is found dead in his bed the next morning, presumably of an intracranial bleed. Soon after Albert’s death, Mr. Page returns to the hotel to find that Helen and her baby have been abandoned by Joe, just as Albert predicted. The movie ends ambiguously with Mr. Page, now a widower, implying that he will look after Helen as a sort of homage to Albert.

Critics have unanimously agreed that the strength of the film originates from the performances of the actors, particularly Glenn Close, and not from the plot. I don’t necessarily agree. I thought the story had a lot of potential as a study in becoming what we despise as a means to avert rejection and failure. Albert, who was the illegitimate child of a mother with some means, was cast out on to the street after the death of her mother and subsequently raped by a group of strangers.  In order to survive, she dressed as a boy and found work as a waiter, rather than continue to be vulnerable as a girl with no family and no prospects. However, she continued to live as a man for thirty years, which suggests that she eventually began to self-identify as Albert Nobbs. Albert, traumatized by rejection and shame, is essentially hiding from himself, creating a new life in which he is able to protect and provide for someone the way that nobody had ever done for him. Similarly, Albert’s competition for Helen’s affections is a handsome bad boy with an abusive, alcoholic father he loathes. He appears to have every intention of doing right by Helen and marrying her, but in the end, his demons win the battle and he continues his father’s legacy, becoming a violent drunk who shirks his responsibilities. Joe, like Albert, inadvertently transforms into that which he had vilified. I think this theme could have been explored more thoroughly, as it's a rather intriguing notion that rings true to life. 

It almost goes without saying that Glenn Close gave a truly outstanding performance as Albert. It can’t have been easy to play a woman playing a man—particularly with a common sort of British accent—but Close positively transformed into the character and gave Albert an awkward vulnerability that was mesmerizing to observe. I was astounded to learn that Close didn’t win an Academy Award for this remarkable performance. The lovely man-boy who played Joe also delivered a delightfully subtle turn, at once aggressively masculine and irreverently boyish. This movie boasts some genuinely solid actors and actresses that make Albert’s trials feel extraordinarily personal.

At the end of the day, I have no idea what to feel about Albert Nobbs. It was just uncomfortable enough to inspire me to ponder it weeks after watching the film, without being so uncomfortable to make me say, “What the F did I just watch?” (I’m talking about you there, A History of Violence.) I was certainly left wanting to know more about Albert; I felt that his abrupt death was unsatisfying and anticlimactic. I definitely felt a sense of emotional dry heaving with this film. There was something wanting to get out, but never quite yielded the catharsis that I expected. 

Read This Post, Or I'll...

There is no doubt that the world is an imperfect place. Examples of the world’s imperfection are numerous and diverse; cupcakes would be free and under 100 calories in a perfect world, children would never get sick, and the ozone layer would not be rapidly deteriorating as a direct consequence of our unabashedly deleterious emissions of poisonous fumes into the atmosphere. But perhaps most striking of all examples of the suboptimal nature of humanity is the fact that people feel the need to threaten one another. Threats, whether overt or implicit, seem to keep the machine of human interaction properly oiled.  Afraid of whatever consequences we believe will be enacted if we do not comply, we seem to respond remarkably well to those who make threats. Collateral, for example, is an accepted principle utilized every day in business. Physicians are threatened with substantial pay cuts if they fail to treat their patients’ diabetes. We even threaten our offspring with time outs and/or loss of iPhone privileges if they don’t desist their undesirable behaviors.

The existence of threats troubles me, but I have come to accept it, just as I’ve come to accept the fact that Rush Limbaugh is probably immortal. What piques my interest, and perhaps even provokes my displeasure, is that enemy of the true threat: the empty threat. You see, I’m a woman of principles. I respect those who follow through and make good on their promises, and what is a threat if not a malevolent promise? Those who fail to deliver on threats upset the natural balance of action and reaction that defines the way we navigate human interactions both major and minor.  Reneging on a promise—or a threat—compromises one’s credibility.

And who is more guilty of empty threats than the modern woman? You know of whom I speak--the well-cared-for, suburban-raised, petite, only marginally athletic modern women who have a lot to lose. These are the women who tend to feel very strongly towards those who have wronged them, and are typically both vocal and effusive about the perceived wrongdoing. Such women enjoy hearing themselves talk and consequently tend to have an over-inflated opinion of their negotiating prowess. Friends, I include myself in this category; in fact, the idea for this post originated from an incident in which I myself was the perpetrator. Several years ago, while in the throes of a rare argument with my man-friend, I heard myself say, “You don’t want to mess with me”.  At the time, this proclamation seemed appropriately rife with righteous anger, given the heated nature of the altercation. However, on further reflection, I can’t help but wonder: to what was I alluding when I warned my man-friend against messing with me? What was the implicit “or I’ll” in this dire announcement? “Or I’ll hide raw meat in the pockets of all your suit jackets?” “Or I’ll use my Christine O’Donnell-esque Wiccan powers to put a hex on you?” “Or I’ll restrain you to a chair and force you to watch 12 consecutive hours of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo?” Let’s face it, my bargaining power—in any situation, not just those in which my loving man-friend is the opponent—is negligible. I’m not physically intimidating, nor do I have access to friends who will physically maim anyone who opposes me. I’m not naturally vindictive, so I would never actually seek to damage an opponent’s reputation (more on this later).  I don’t have the patience or stamina to enact slow, deliberate revenge like the count of Monte Cristo. I have no particular skills or qualities that would enable me to make good on even the most minor of threats.

I am by no means alone in this deficiency of adequate threatening capacity. I have numerous girl friends who have been known for making utterances such as, “You do not want to f--- with me” and “she doesn’t know what she’s getting herself into by pissing me off”. The specifics elude me: what happens if you f--- with an Indian girl from the suburbs who has wealthy parents and a pet cockapoodle? What exactly is someone getting into by pissing off a five-foot-three Caucasian girl clad head-to-toe in Tory Burch? The same can be asked of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who, admittedly, serve as a dreadful frame of reference for any discussion on female behavior. Still, I vividly recall the hag-faced, witch-hair-having Kyle Richards saying something along the lines of, “Don’t f--- with me like that, okay? You’ll regret it.” How will Kyle Richards, a former child star whose only current claim to fame is having a handsome half-Jewish, half-Mexican hubby, make anyone regret f---ing with her?  I have no answer to this. Perhaps there are some women who do indeed have the power to implement terrible consequences upon their enemies; my girl friends and the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills have no such power (that I know of).

Which brings me to my next point: girl-illa warfare. This is the average woman’s best hope for following through on threats made in the heat of battle. You see, a regular, garden-variety woman of normal physical prowess can’t beat the shit out of someone who pisses her off. No matter how irate I feel towards Ann Coulter, I will never be able to corner her in a dark alley and sock her in the mandible. I just don’t have the requisite skills. The skill that I, and other women like me, do possess in abundance is the ability to engage in what I call girl-illa warfare. Like guerrilla warfare, this sort of attack relies upon secrecy, intrigue, and covert operations. One must strike hard and with no warning. The weapons are typically rumors, disparaging comments about the enemy’s physique, and smiling in the enemy’s face while planting the seeds of destruction behind her back. The damage is done not to the enemy's body; it is the enemy's psyche that is bruised and her morale that is avulsed. A soldier of girl-illa warfare must be versed not in combat or artillery; she must have knowledge of an enemy's weaknesses and insecurities.These are classic girl-illa warfare principles, and they are the most effective method of enforcing the terms of a woman’s threat.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to acknowledge the fact that many of my posts, probably including this one, have been lambasted for having misogynistic undertones. Please note that I’m including myself in this particular critique of the way some women (not all, but some) fight, both with words and actions.  We must all acknowledge that most of us are neither as powerful nor as powerless as we may believe. Rather, our power to influence others and to assert ourselves lies somewhere in between the Incredible Hulk (“You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!”) and those mean girls who wrote the Burn Book.  As I stated in the beginning of this post, if this world were less flawed and if human interactions were not replete with toxic power struggles and indiscriminate mistrust, threats would be irrelevant. However, empty threats, just like empty pizza boxes, should be discarded. They're simply unworthy of consideration.

"Look, Jack, I'm flying!" "False. You're standing on a ship with your shoulders abducted."

I'm one of the few people in the world who simply does not change. I'm a bit like igneous rock or Donald Trump's wig: immutable, irascible, and constant. My attitude towards the film Titanic is proof that my nine-year-old self is basically identical to my twenty-four-year-old self; that is to say, a closet sentimental wearing too much makeup and mentally reciting cytokine functions to keep herself from crying in public.

When someone decided to pull Titanic off the shelf, dust it off, and refurbish it in 3D, I instantly dropped what I was doing, donned my nerdy 3D glasses, and settled down with a box of Kleenex to watch one of my favorite big-budget, cathartic, larger-than-life films. And I am the queen of big-budget, cathartic, larger-than-life films. This one, in particular, has enthralled me since the tender age of nine, when I saw the film five times in the theater, purchased the visual companion book, wallpapered my bedroom in Titanic posters, memorized the script, and learned to play the theme music on my flute. Since then, I've remained a devoted fan of all things Titanic.

Unfortunately, I can't say definitively that the 3D reissue was worth the absurd price tag of $35. Sure, it was cool to see bits of the wreckage hurling towards you, but I don't know that it revolutionized my viewing experience. I do, however, feel like I know Kate Winslet quite well after seeing her boobs in three gigantic, high-definition dimensions. I just might send her an email and invite her over to help with my spring cleaning.

The only thing--and I truly mean the only thing--that has changed about my opinion of Titanic is my take on the "love story". It's not that I don't still find the whirlwind romance of Jack and Rose to be deliciously and tragically entrancing; I do, and I appreciate the actors' obvious, accessible, Disney-esque performances. (Kate and Leo are talented actors who didn't allow their egos to coerce them into over-thinking their characters.) However, I no longer think that there was anything all that deep or durable about the relationship between Jack and Rose. I think it was a lusty, teenage fling--a manifestation of Rose's rebellion against her buttoned-up, society girl persona. Had Jack survived, and the two of them run off together as planned, I think that Rose would have become increasingly resentful of Jack for luring her away from her luxurious, easy way of life, and Jack would have become a philandering alcoholic to compensate for his guilt and feelings of inadequacy. Their "love story" would have ended in depression, detachment, and a realization that what they felt for one another was an illusion, conjured by the glamor and mystery of their tryst on Titanic. In short, they would have fallen apart, like so many real-life couples do. If anyone had tried to tell me that when I was nine years old, and had never experienced romance for myself, I would have been horror-struck and indignant. "But they love each other!" I would have gasped, not knowing that, in the real world, what you want at age seventeen isn't necessarily what you'll want at age thirty.

So I wasn't quite as sad and desolate this time around when poor Jack the Popsicle finally drowned, because I knew that their love story had the chance to fade away gracefully, rather than crumbling to pieces in gritty, unglamorous dysfunction. And that's what I've always loved about movies! The way they play out is so much neater and more orderly than real life.  When I was younger, I might have wished that the story had ended differently, that it could have had a "happy ending", but now I understand that a story with a happy ending doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as a real-life favorable outcome.

They just don't make corny, over-the-top tear-jerkers like Titanic anymore. Movies are so damn complicated nowadays, with all their inceptions and mementos and different versions of Spider-Man. Give me a good, epic story with stunning visual effects (and, ideally, a battle scene or two) and I'm happy--at any age.

When you read The Game of Thrones, you get addicted and fail out of school.

Have you ever wondered what crack would be like if it existed in the form of a book? No? Well, neither have I, but I know the answer nonetheless. A plump, Santa Claus-looking man named George R. R. Martin, has written a series called A Song of Ice and Fire. It's a sweeping, dark, violent, complex fantasy serial comprising seven books, two of which have yet to be written, but the best way I can describe these books is: LITERARY CRACK.

These are the books on which the wildly popular HBO series Game of Thrones is based. I am late to the game on both the books and TV series, having only read two of the books at the time of this publication and watched nary an episode of the series, but at least I can use the excuse of having been only eight years old when the first book was written, and consequently more interested in reading about the antics of Beverly Cleary's Ramona and her oddly-named sister, Beezus. At any rate, I'm now on Team Martin, and I prostrate myself at the feet of this portly genius, who masterfully spins wildly complex and fascinating story-lines with a deftness that would earn a fist-bump even from Professor Tolkien himself. (If having double R's in one's initials confers the ability to write epic fantasy classics loved by millions of readers worldwide, I'll gladly change by name to Rhea R.R. Incendiary Wit, M.D.)

While the books are dense and confusing, they truly are expertly crafted and undeniably gratifying on many levels. More importantly, Martin has managed to harness the rip-roaring spirit of high fantasy while framing it within the context of an almost Borgia-like historical epic that is uncomfortably similar to our own world. And the man is not shy about killing off majorly important and beloved characters, no sir. I may have only read the first two books, but I've read all the spoilers, so I'm well aware of the horrors to come. But I'm hooked, and must plow ahead through the vast tomes until I see how the story ends. I suppose it can be said that a good writer writes nicotine books, while George R. R. Martin writes crack books. But this particular crack ain't whack.

Such is my adoration of the series that I find myself wondering if the world Martin has created is superior to the real world. (I already know that the world in musical theatre--the one in which it's socially acceptable to sing one's feelings and crucial life events--is infinitely superior to the real world.)Naturally, I made a list.

How Westeros Is Better Than Earth

• Dragons exist.
• Direwolves exist.
• People wear fur...lots of fur. And nobody confuses them with mob wives.
• People have WAY cooler names in Westeros, i.e. Rhaegar, Barristan, and Melisandre. Some Earth names for comparison: Newt, Mitt, and Blue Ivy.
• Warriors can get away with wearing truly fabulous armor (see: Tywin Lannister's swishy, shiny, red number. See also: Loras Tyrell's flowery belt. See also: Renly...just Renly in general).
• Phrases like "the flayed man of the Dreadfort" are commonplace.
• Every important person has a sigil. I've always wanted a sigil. Mine would probably be a snarling tiger, clad head-to-tail in Chanel.
• I don't think Miley Cyrus or Ann Coulter exist in Westeros.

How Earth is Better Than Westeros

• Democracy exists.
• It surely sucks to be a smallfolk in Westeros. Those people really get jerked around a lot when kings clash and all that, and I mean really.
• We also don't really use the term "smallfolk" on Earth to refer to peasants. It just doesn't sound right.
• To my knowledge, there are no ice zombies on Earth. (Unless Ann Coulter is one of The Others?)